Perhaps the most evocative road signs are those that mention not a city or town, but a region – particularly when that region is The North, which appears (as The NORTH) on signs as far south as Upper Street in Islington. But there is a problem: where is The North, or at least, where is its southern boundary? Continue reading “Where is The North? Where is The South? The NHS can help”
Category: Maps
Why London is the home of loss-making NHS hospital trusts
A decreasing number of NHS hospitals are run by plain old NHS trusts, simply because an increasing number are successfully applying to be foundation trusts – which requires evidence of financial stability. Those which have not yet become foundations are regulated by the Audit Commission, which therefore tends to oversee those on a weaker financial footing. It recently reported on the trusts still in its care, and found that 10 of the non-foundations were in financial deficit in 2011-12, totalling £177m. (Trusts have a legal duty not to make a loss, although this applies over three-year periods.) Continue reading “Why London is the home of loss-making NHS hospital trusts”
A healthcare systems medal table: USA wins inefficiency gold
It is tricky to compare different countries’ healthcare systems, as well as politically explosive. The World Health Organisation (WHO) last tried in 2000, concluding that France had the best in the world.
The following attempt is very simplistic, but also very easy to understand. It uses WHO data to calculate how much each country spends on each year of average lifespan beyond 45, per year per person in purchasing power parity-adjusted US dollars. 45 is chosen simply because it is slightly below the lowest average longevity, Malawi, of 47 years. In the map below, the darker the shade of green, the more expensive each extra year of life: the figure for each country will pop up when the cursor is over it. Continue reading “A healthcare systems medal table: USA wins inefficiency gold”
Removing the United Kingdom from Google Fusion Tables
In late May, most of the maps on this site (plus those I have produced for Guardian Healthcare Network) switched from beautiful satellite images (below left – a section of my map on male life expectancy) to rather less interesting atlas-style maps (below right). They also gained a big ‘United Kingdom’ label over the Scottish borders, presumably to the chagrin of the SNP. But it turns out this and other labels can be removed – with some work. Continue reading “Removing the United Kingdom from Google Fusion Tables”
NHS clinical commissioning groups drop odd names, adopt boring ones
The NHS Commissioning Board last week published a new list of clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), which will take over from primary care trusts in April 2013 in running primary care in England. As I was remapping the list for Guardian Healthcare Network (the map is also below), three things were striking about the new list: it’s shorter (212 ’emerging’ CCGs as opposed to 268 before); there are now far fewer very small CCGs; and the rich profusion of odd names in previous lists has been stamped out. Continue reading “NHS clinical commissioning groups drop odd names, adopt boring ones”